Free Frag Box by Richard A. Thompson

hands up with greasy fingers spread. I handed him a napkin, and he wiped first his hands and then his mouth before he spoke.
    “Thank you. He might have wanted to, but he was trying to stay out of sight, as it were. When he came to see me, he snuck in the back way, through the fire escape stairs.”
    “That’s not like him.”
    “If you say so, I believe you. But when I met him he was definitely running scared.”
    “Do you know of what?”
    “I think he knew he was about to be murdered.”
    “Did he say that?”
    “In a roundabout way. He found it ironic. He said, as I recall, ‘After all these years, somebody is keeping a frag pot on me.’ And then he used one of those colorful expressions I can never seem to remember. Something about a card.”
    “A death card, maybe?”
    “Yes, that’s it. Thank you. He said somebody had a death card for him. Or he himself had one; I don’t remember which. Does that mean anything to you?”
    “The ace of spades,” I said. “Usually from a deck of cards with a military unit insignia on the back. Have you told the police any of this?”
    “I have told you, Mr. Jackson. My legal duty is now discharged.”
    He gulped down the rest of his food and beer, stood, belched in a most undignified way, and started to leave.
    “Stay a second,” I said. “What about Charlie’s body?”
    “I’ll play your ridiculous game. What about it?”
    “What happens to it? Do I need to make some kind of arrangements?”
    “You are the heir, not the next of kin. If you made some kind of arrangements, I’m sure nobody would argue with you. But you don’t have to do anything. I assume they will keep the body for evidence for a while and then do whatever they do with homeless dead people.”
    “Which is what?”
    “I have absolutely no idea.”
    He turned to go again, and this time, I let him. He did not look back at me, but he continued to cast hunted looks everywhere else.
    I watched him leave, and wondered what, if anything, I should do about him. Even more, I wondered what I should do about Charlie’s body. I hoped they wouldn’t burn it. Then I remembered the will.
    I pulled the papers out of my pocket and unfolded them. The first page seemed to be all preamble, with Mildorf’s business address and Charlie’s military service number, which was all he had in the way of ID. There were a lot of wheretofores and inasmuchas-es and ipso factotums that finally got us to the second page, where the real meat was. Once you got to it, it took only about half a page more for Charlie to call himself sane and me his heir. His scrawling signature, in real lawyers’ blue ink, took up half of the remaining space, leaving a couple inches at the bottom that had something else written on it.
    Printed in block letters, all caps, in pencil, it said simply, “ YOU ARE BEING WATCHED .” If it was true, it was definitely too bad, because somewhere out there was a box that might just contain thirty thousand dollars. And I rather badly needed twenty-five.
    I decided I had hit enough pool balls for one day.

Chapter 7
    Fox and Geese
    As I stepped out of the door from Lefty’s, I scanned the sidewalk and the parked cars for a tail, but I couldn’t spot one. But then, if it was any good, I wouldn’t, would I? In a standard cougars-and-rabbits operation, there would be at least four shadows, two on each side of the street. Of course there was also the distinct possibility that G. Harold Mildorf was a babbling lunatic, which would also mean that I wouldn’t spot a tail, because there wouldn’t be one. But my gut instinct was that G. Harold was correct. And at some other level, I think I wanted him to be. Maybe I had acquired a will in more ways than one. It was time to engage the enemy.
    I paused in front of Lefty’s a bit longer, to let a couple of young black women pass in front of me. One was tiny and fragile-looking and incredibly pretty. From her size alone, I would have said she wasn’t yet a